Exhumed
by Birds-and-Beasts
Summary: Loosely based on a prompt on tumblr. On the third anniversary of Maeve's death, Reid reflects on the past and questions his sanity as details of that night are unearthed.


Everything was gray. The overcast sky turned the bare, skeletal trees gray, matching the gravestones. Spencer hunched in front of her resting place with his fists in his jacket pockets, rereading the words etched in stone:

 _Maeve Donovan. Beloved daughter and friend. May 18, 1982 - January 16, 2013._

Three years ago to the day. It wasn't as bad as it used to be. The first year had been the hardest. Since then, he devoted more time to work, spent more time with his team, made more of an effort to go out. And slowly, he got better, proving once again the unfathomable human resilience of those who had experienced the unspeakable.

But on the anniversary, the cemented cracks became noticed, the scar tissue felt an old phantom ache, and Spencer was drawn back into the waves of grief that overtook him three years ago. What was it about anniversary dates that seemed to undo all that time had meticulously healed? Still, he felt it almost a necessity to feel that again; he was discomfited at the thought that one day he may not feel that familiar ache–of sorrow and loss and guilt. The ache of unheard apology.

"I'm sorry," he murmured to her headstone. His breath hitched and he closed his eyes. He listened to the silence of the cemetery, hoping it would seep into his mind and quiet his raging thoughts, but it seemed to have the opposite effect. It felt like the tumult in his head osmotically dispersed into the graveyard, animating it; leaves flitted and crunched in the lifeless grass, and the wind whispered.

"Spencer?"

His eyes flew open. He'd heard that voice hundreds of times before, but not in years. It couldn't be. He turned around toward the call of his name. He froze.

She was there. Maeve. Standing in front of him. Here. Alive.

No. No, it was too good to be true. It wasn't her. He had seen her die; she was buried in the frozen ground beneath his feet. But he saw her. 'No!' he fought internally with himself. This must be it then. A hallucination. An episode. He was having a schizophrenic break. The years of grief, and stress from his job finally proved too much for his mind to handle, so it bent and gave him exactly what he'd wanted. He didn't care. It didn't matter if his mind was splitting from reality. It didn't matter if he was seeing visions or ghosts. All that mattered was that he was seeing her.

"Spence?"

Her voice was so clear, so real, more so even than in their phone conversations. ' _Auditory hallucinations_ ,' a voice in the corner of his mind pondered. ' _Very common'_. He wanted to go to her, to touch her, to give in to the hallucination, but his body stayed rooted to the spot. ' _Catatonic, maybe_ ,' the voice wondered.

She stepped forward. "Are you alright?" She stood inches from him, a look of concern on her face. Funny, his hallucinations were worried about him.

"Spencer, I'm sorry." She waited for some kind of response, but he just stood there stunned. "Please say something," she implored.

She reached out and touched his shoulder. Was that part of the hallucination? He blinked, brought out of his momentary paralysis. His breath hitched, and in the same second, Maeve wrapped her arms around him. He hesitated, afraid if he moved, she would vanish like a soap bubble and be gone forever. He gingerly brought his arms around her. This was the first time he had the privilege of touching her. Actually, physically feeling her made it real; he couldn't deny her presence–this was no hallucination.

Tears welled up in his eyes. "Maeve…"

She let go and looked up at him with a melancholy smile. "Hey, Spence."

He stared uncomprehendingly at her. Her hair was shorter and her cheeks were flushed from the cold. He watched her breath unfurl out from between her lips, visible in the January air. "You were dead… I watched you die…"

"I got shot in the head. I should have died."

"No. No, you weren't supposed to die. I was supposed to go in there and make sure you came out alive. And I didn't." His voice got small, and his welled-up tears spilled over. "I thought you were dead," he sobbed, his chin trembling.

Maeve's shoulders rose, and she pursed her lips, searching for the right words. "I'm not. Spence…"

His mouth hung open in limp disbelief. That night replayed in his head without permission. He had seen Diane pull the trigger, watched Maeve fall to the floor, stared in shock at the frightening pool of her blood.

Maeve exhaled steadily. "Let's go sit down." Spencer nodded woodenly and Maeve took his hand. She led him in between gravestones and they sat on a stone bench bordering the path. Maeve held his hand in both of hers on her lap. Her thumb scaled his bony knuckles and traced the blue veins that shone through his skin. She looked up from their hands into his eyes. "What's going through your head?"

He opened his mouth to speak but then closed it again. He didn't know if he could trust what was going on in his head at the moment. "I just…don't understand. I can't comprehend… How…?"

"How did I not die?" Maeve prompted. "You can say it." He didn't. "Right place at the wrong time, I guess. A centimeter or two in another direction could have been very different."

Space and time. There had been one day when, in his grief, he drove himself mad solving equation after equation. The volume and mass of the bullet. The speed and velocity it left the gun. The force of the kick back from the shot. The velocity curve that a bullet could travel through one human skull and into another. Would that amount of force to the brain be fatal? It would have been easier, mathematically, to consult the–unbeknownst to him, nonexistent–ME report and see exactly how many centimeters the bullet had lodged itself in her head. But he couldn't bring himself to do it. Math and physics he understood; their familiarity and rhythmic calculations brought comfort. But no matter how many equations he solved, no matter what variables he changed, he couldn't get away from the end result.

"Tore through the skin," Maeve touched her left temple, "cracked the skull. Bruised my brain pretty bad. I have some hearing loss in one ear. They put me in a medically induced coma while the swelling went down. I don't really remember that, just what I was told." Her speech was very brusque and matter-of-fact; it seemed that she'd already emotionally sorted out the ordeal, came to terms with it. He was still mentally fumbling with the impossibility of her presence. Then again, she had had three years of reflection and therapy to help her cope, whereas he only became aware that she was alive a mere ten minutes ago. Spencer wondered how much she remembered of that night, if anything. He didn't ask.

He could see the image she described: Maeve being rushed into emergency surgery, unconscious. The bullet being removed and the pressure on her brain relieved. The hole in her head being sewn back up, the skin pulled together in a seam. Laying in a hospital bed somewhere, tubes and wires coming out of her like roads feeding into a city, delivering sustenance.

Was there anyone waiting at her bedside for her to wake up?

With an airy sigh, she spoke again and he broke out of his reverie, catching every one of her words. "There was a lot of rehabilitation, lot of therapy. Nothing essential was permanently damaged; I'm okay." Her gaze had drifted to their hands, and she quickly glanced back at him, carefully reading his expression. "Are you okay?"

Was he okay? How was he supposed to answer that? He exhaled steadily through his mouth and swallowed. "I don't know, Maeve," he rasped, and his throat felt constricted. "I was getting better; it had become bearable. I was functional; I could go to work without thinking about you, I-I could walk past a pay phone without losing it. But now… I don't know."

"Will you be okay?" Maeve amended.

Spencer let out a sigh and a small smile. Maeve was glad to see it. "If I'm not completely insane…yes, I will be okay." He didn't much care which it was.

Maeve exhaled, relieved. Her eyes shifted downward, as if considering something, then she looked at him squarely, deliberately. Whatever she had been considering, she had decided. "Can I ask you something." She wasn't asking permission, but leading into her point.

"Of course." The corner of Maeve's mouth twitched upward nostalgically. It was what he would always say to her when she was debating whether to tell him something, or when she asked something of him, or when she was unsure about venting her fears and insecurities to him. She missed it.

"I know this is weird. I understand if you've moved on and you never want to see me again. But if you're willing, I want to pick up where we left off."

He couldn't believe he was having this conversation. He had spent so much time telling himself that she wasn't coming back, that there was no use imagining what could have been because he would just torture himself over the impossible. But now? He had this unbelievable opportunity to start over, to resume things with Maeve and have another shot at a future together.

Really there was only one answer. "Of course."

The corners of her mouth stretched into a wide grin, pulling around her teeth, filling her whole face. Spencer had never seen her like that before. He knew the sounds: the slight exhale of breath, the gentle, almost imperceptible friction of skin brushing against skin. But seeing the expression that accompanied that euphony was entirely new.

"I've missed you," she beamed. It was impossible to convey how much she missed him. But she knew that he knew, because it was obvious he felt the same way.

"I've missed you, too."

It was unfathomable. Improbable, but not impossible. As he sat on the stone bench, holding Maeve's hand, watching her beaming at him, he couldn't deny that this was the truth. She was back.


End file.
